


Before She Hears Her Brother's Voice

by JoyfullyyoursDav



Series: Lup's POV [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Being Lost, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon Universe, Family Feels, Gen, Loneliness, Lup (The Adventure Zone) Lives, Mental Illness, Separations, Team as Family, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 09:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13701999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyfullyyoursDav/pseuds/JoyfullyyoursDav
Summary: Ten years is a long time to be alone inside an umbrella.* * *Her consciousness returns to her first, and then her senses, one by one like a switchboard is being methodically flipped on within her.First, she can see.





	Before She Hears Her Brother's Voice

Her consciousness returns to her first, and then her senses, one by one like a switchboard is being methodically flipped on within her. First, she can see. The black-curtained chamber she’s lying in, culminating in a peak gathered twenty feet above her. And that’s all she knows for a time, the length of which is impossible to calculate. Her consciousness is slippery, hard to hold onto, and she loses her grasp on it frequently, descending back into total darkness. But eventually, her eyes stay open for long stretches. She concentrates on every crease of the curtains, every inch of the chamber that she can see from her position, flat on her back. She studies the unchanging column she’s trapped in as carefully as she’s studied anything; she commits every detail to memory.

She’s able to move, next—first one hand, then the other. She holds them up in front of her face, spectral shapes that are definitely _hers_ , and she flexes her fingers, balls her hands into fists, moves them back and forth in front of her eyes just to prove she’s real, before exhaustion overtakes her and the world goes black again. With the movement of her hands, she’s able to start moving other parts of her body, and with that, she can feel. She feels the padded floor underneath her, and she struggles to sit up, leaning against the curtained wall, feeling that, too, sturdy behind her back. She runs her hands over the curtains, the carpet underneath her, the texture of it all, the warmth of her own form. And now she can feel the crackling energy that ripples through her every so often, a sensation that is close to pain, and she stares at a spot in the curtain opposite her and tries, desperately, to hold on. But she’s not sure what she’s holding onto.

Suddenly one day she can hear, which is disorienting in its simplicity, how it changes nothing and everything. There aren’t any sounds wherever she is, yet she can immediately tell the difference between _not being able to hear_ and _not hearing_. She starts whispering to herself, and the first word she says is, “Lup.” She says it over and over, _lup lup lup lup_ , only half-remembering what it means.

And then the memories come. They return to her last, trickling in one by one like tardy dinner guests. She remembers that Lup is her name, the name she chose, the name she wrote down and smiled at a hundred times before ever speaking it aloud.

Then she remembers Taako. She remembers his face first, sees it with almost startling clarity, as if he’s right there with her, and the first few times she sees him, she doesn’t know who he is. When it finally hits her, _that’s Taako_ , she laughs. Wait until she tells him she forgot his stupid face. Her _own_ face.

The memories come more easily after that. Barry, Magnus, Merle, Davenport, Lucretia. The Starblaster, their mission, the relics, the Hunger. Their home world, the beach, the aspen trees of their youth. The umbrastaff, magic, her mother, Aunt Mia. Tommy guns, elderflower macaroons, roast turkey, sunshine, the sea. Lup remembers it all. Energy cuts through her with each memory, threatening to tear her apart. She has never in her life felt more separated from herself, her world, her family. She’s untethered by every definition possible, and sometimes her spectral form jerks so erratically, she thinks, _This is it. This is the end_. But she fights. She meditates. She concentrates on Taako, on Barry. Barry’s hands, the beds of his fingernails. Taako’s eyes, crinkled at the edges with a smile. Little details. And the energy subsides, her form remains intact and she rests, leaning into the dark.

 

She rests with a patience she has no choice but to learn. She chronicles every memory she has, combing through them all, lining them up like shells on sand. When she feels herself losing control, she closes her eyes and thinks, _Love Barry. Trust Barry. Love Taako. Trust Taako_. This mantra centers her, settles her, allows her to keep. Just keep.

She’s able, now, to cast her senses beyond the staff. The first time she sees outside is so disorienting, it instantly makes her nauseous. She sees the cavern from above, from somewhere in the upper corner of the carved-out room, and looks at her own decomposing corpse propped up against the cave wall, the umbrastaff poking out of her robes. But no one else is there, no sound can be heard. Every so often, she listens or looks outside, and aside from the morbidly fascinating way her body changes, melting away to clean white bone, nothing else ever does.

She dreams the most vivid dreams she’s ever had when she goes into trances. In another life, centuries ago, as a different person, she might have called them hallucinations, they’re so real. But now, they serve as her lifeline. She meditates like a pro, settling into a deep trance, and then she talks to her friends. She always meets them on the Starblaster, the only place that’s ever felt like home. Most frequently, she talks to Barry. For a hundred years, she had talked through problems and logistics and algorithms and plans with Barry, who patiently lent her an ear, a hand to hold, a pen and paper for notes, and helped her figure every last thing out. She relied on it then and she relies on it now.

“My body’s a skeleton,” she tells him one day as they sit on the deck of the Starblaster. The sky is bright blue above them.

“Oh?” Barry’s eyes widen with interest. “Hmm.”

“How long does it take for that to happen?” she asks.

“Not super long, usually. A few months. But it’s pretty cold in this cave, and I’m not sure how many insects there are in here.” Barry looks at her thoughtfully. “Did you notice many insects?”

“No, but…” Lup shakes her head. “I never got too close.”

“Six months,” Barry says, sounding impossibly certain, and Lup thinks he’s lying, thinks it’s been much longer than that.

She sighs. “What’s taking so long?” she asks.

“For us, you mean? To find you?”

“Yes.”

“You know I can’t answer that, babe.” Barry smiles gently. “I can tell you we’re looking, though. You know we’re all looking.”

 

She tries breaking out of the staff regularly. With all the power she can muster, she slams her body against the walls of the chamber, but her spectral form doesn’t do much of anything. She roots through the curtains, groping her way along every inch of the circular wall, trying to find any point of weakness, any defect, anything. The walls are so thickly lined with curtains that she never finds whatever is behind them: her hands simply reach a point they cannot pass through.

So she casts spells. She launches fireball after fireball at the walls, the ceiling, making the chamber unbearably hot and smoky, but that’s all. The curtain on the top layer gets singed, charred at the edges, but the endless layers of curtain underneath are unharmed. She fires magic missiles, bolts of lightning, blades of flame over and over again, to no avail, until she’s burned through every last spell slot and can’t do anymore.

She tries to cast magic out of the staff, too. Her spectral hands catch fire, bright and hot before her eyes, but she’s unable to move the magic beyond the walls of the chamber. She focuses all her energy, built up through long stretches of meditation, to create wind or noise or a wisp of a flame outside her prison—with no luck. It feels _possible_. Channeling her power through the item she created to do just that feels inevitable, but she’s never able to do it. And that disconnect is the most frustrating experience of her life.

She tries describing this sensation to Barry, who takes her hands in his and says, “If anyone can do it, you can, babe.”

But she can’t. She tries and tries until she exhausts herself and takes five trances to recuperate. She lists every spell she’s ever heard of and tries them, one by one, until she can’t stay conscious anymore. And then she tries again when she wakes up, and it never works. It never works.

 

Sometimes she talks to Taako, but that…hurts. Like putting her soul in a vice grip. The Taako of her mind doesn’t understand, refuses to understand why she left him. And speaking to him in these trances is too much like speaking to herself, touching on some deep-dark place inside her, a place full of fear and grief and longing. She _misses_ them, all of them, so much. She misses everything. Sunlight, food. Touch. Connection. Taako confronts her with all of these things, with everything she’s missing, irrespective of logic or reason. He is not Barry, notebook in hand and calm smile on his face. He is impatient, demanding, heartbroken. One time, he asks her ferociously, “Don’t you fucking miss me?”

“Of course I do,” she replies sadly.

“Then fight harder,” he says.

“Don’t boss me around,” she tries to tease, but the Taako of her imagination is having none of it.

“Fuck you,” he says, without anger, without any emotion at all.

“Taako, I don’t know what to do,” she confesses. “I’m stuck. I’m trapped.”

“Pretty sure that’s not what I meant,” he says, and then blinks out of her sight, leaving her alone, eyes open in her always-empty chamber, confused. Fight harder. Fight for what, if not to get out of the staff?

She measures time by spurts of magical electricity, by trance, by number of footsteps she takes around and around and around the inside of her chamber, pacing like a caged tiger. All meaningless increments, of course. It’s been two hundred trances since she last kissed Barry. It’s been a thousand paces since she thanked Taako at the dining table aboard their ship.

She feels her resolve draining from her. Her conversations with Barry grow morose, dire. She frequently breaks down in tears during them, and he can rarely comfort her. She’s stopped having conversations with Taako altogether. Sometimes she tries, but it’s like he missed the message and doesn’t show up—or worse, like he’s avoiding her. She feels as if she’s losing her mind, degree by degree.

She keeps reliving her memories, mostly just to pass time and hold onto who she is, but she gets stuck in a couple of them, replaying them over and over. One is the day she died—or more specifically, the moment Cyrus Rockseeker’s blade cut across her back. She feels the cold shock of pain, the burning fire that spread through her veins, clotting her lungs. She feels herself fall against the cave wall over and over and over again.

And the other memory she relives is the golden day in the sun on a quiet empty world, with her brother. The best day ever. The breakfast, warm and homey and comforting. The park, as she wrestles a water gun away from Davenport and runs away with it, laughing. The shattering waterfall of five giant chandeliers, the delicious thrill of evocation magic coursing out of her wands as Taako cheers behind her. The conjured turkey, Taako’s bubbling laughter that fills the kitchen, the long conversation they have over a bottle of vodka. She relives every single moment of this day as many times as she can, even though each time, the colors are less vibrant, the sun is less bright, Taako’s face gets a little hazier…this only makes her cling to the memory more. She’s terrified of losing it. Not this too.

 

Energy crackles through her more often now, disfiguring her with greater intensity and it takes longer to regain control. She has to yell her mantra aloud, “Trust Taako! Trust Barry! Love Taako! Love Barry!” until it stops. She spends less time pacing, more time lying down and staring at the black, ever still curtains. She feels like she’s losing a game she never learned the rules to, a game she can’t possibly win. A game she doesn’t know _how_ to win. It occurs to her one day that this, _this_ is what Taako meant by fight harder. Not to get out, but to stay in. Stay in her form. Stay Lup.

 _Thinking of yourself not in first person_ , she thinks. _Not a great sign._ And yet, it feels too insurmountable to fix any of it. Even her thoughts don’t seem within her control. She whispers endless apologies to Barry, to Taako, to all of her friends. She has one more imagined conversation with Taako where she tries to say goodbye to him. He stands up, furious.

“No,” he says. “Fuck that, Lup. You don’t get to do that to me.”

“But I never got to say goodbye to you,” she tells him through tears.

“There’s a reason for that,” he snaps. “We were never supposed to say goodbye to each other.” His eyes are burning now. “ _Back soon_ ,” he says scathingly. “Was that a lie? Was that a joke to you?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“Prove it.”

“I can’t.” She’s crying now. “I can’t get out, Taako. I’ve tried everything.”

“I’m not asking you to get out, Lup,” he says. “I’ll fucking find you. Sooner or later. I’m just asking you to wait.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m just so worried, Taako. Worried I’ll never see you again. And I never said goodbye. That seems…important.”

Taako shakes his head. “I told you, we’re not supposed to say goodbye. Ever. The note you left was the truth, but it wasn’t a promise to me, Lup. It was an agreement between us. We’ll be back together soon.”

And so...she waits.


End file.
